Hell Week (3 page)

The buxom brunette beside me shook her head. "I know! We have all semester to go to class, but Rush only lasts one week, and affects our Entire Lives!"

Sadly, she spoke without irony. Up on the steps Jenna rapped on the door, telling the Epsilon Zetas that the next round was assembled, and beside her, Hillary looked at me with no small disapproval. I reached up and smoothed my hair with my hands, an involuntary reaction.

Such was the power of the Rho Gamma stare. In addition to shepherding our group from house to house, they ran herd on the rushees throughout the day, enforcing the rules. Besides the mandatory wearing of name tags, we weren't allowed to talk to "actives"--that is, sorority members-- outside of the parties.

My name tag was dutifully pinned to the bodice of my sundress, where it scratched the pale skin of my bare arm, and the only sorority girls I'd talked to today had been Jenna and Hillary, which was, obviously, allowed. But I was pretty sure writing pithy articles skewering Rush traditions was against the Rho Gamma rules.

F F F

Two houses later, my brain and my butt were both numb.

Every round had a theme, and tonight was the philan- thropy round. Every sorority chooses, at the national level, a pet cause or organization, and each chapter is required to do an annual fund-raiser to justify the other fifty weeks of purely self-indulgent social activities. And for the past eternity, the rushees had been required to hear about it, mostly through video montages and PowerPoint presenta- tions.

The propaganda also showed the house's personality. The Theta Nus had managed to work their GPA ranking into their presentation. The Epsilon Zetas had lots of guys in their pictures, always with arms thrown around the girls. I'm not saying the Epsilon Zetas were a sure thing, in any sense of the phrase, but . . . well, when your house is called the EZs maybe it's just inevitable.

Dusk was sitting heavy and humid in the sky as Jenna and Hillary escorted us to the next house on our agenda, the Zeta Theta Pis. The curvy brunette from before--Miss Entire Life--drew up alongside me. "I like your outfit," she said as we walked. "It's kind of sixties retro."

It was. Gran never got rid of anything. Yellow and red, with splashes of orange, the frock had useless little spaghetti straps and a full, pleated skirt. I wore ballet flats and a Band-Aid on my ankle where I'd cut myself shaving. "I raided my grandmother's closet for something to wear."

"Grandmother's Closet?" she echoed. "I've never heard of that store."

"It's, uh, very exclusive." There was another girl, a red- head, stuck with us behind the rushee bottleneck on the sidewalk. I caught Red stifling a smile, but the brunette was oblivious.

"Anyway. Great dress. I'm Tricia, by the way."

"Thanks. I'm Maggie."

We reached the Zeta house slightly ahead of schedule, earning a restorative break. Lip gloss tubes and compacts appeared for synchronized primping. Only Red-haired Girl and I abstained, and lounged against the stair rail to wait.

She reminded me of an Irish setter, in a good way. Her dark red hair fell, slightly feathered, to her shoulders, and she had a rangy, athletic grace. She looked as if she would be more at home on a ball field than a sorority house.

"What houses are you interested in, Maggie?" Tricia asked. She had whipped out a little battery-operated fan and was using it to blow her long brown hair from her flushed face.

I mimicked Hillary's ultraserious tone. "How can I pos- sibly decide when I've yet to hear all the philanthropies?"

Irish Setter Girl smirked. Tricia looked suspiciously be- tween us. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. Except that `Recruitment' "--I made little quotes in the air--"is like comparing the gas mileage of a Mustang and a Corvette. You say you're being practical, but all you really care about is which one looks best for picking up guys."

Hillary strode past us; along with her black T-shirt with its green RG, she wore pressed khaki shorts and sneakers that had never seen a workout. She glanced at me on her way up the steps. "I see you managed to find your name tag." Then she stopped, her blond ponytail swinging as she stared with narrowing eyes at my chest. "What did you do to it?"

I glanced down at the tag, which now said: Maggie Quinn. English major. Lives at home. "I thought this was more effi- cient."

Tsks and titters from the rushees. Irish Setter Girl snorted, in a laughing-with-me kind of way.

"Prospective New Members," said the scandalized Rho Gamma, "are not supposed to alter their name badges!"

"Oh. I didn't know." Jenna climbed the porch steps past us. "Don't worry about it, Maggie. We'll get you a new one tomorrow."

Hillary bit back her opinion on that, and followed her up. "We'll see if they're ready for you."

As soon as Hillary and Jenna turned to the door, the red- haired girl hissed at me. "Hey. Have you still got the pen?"

"Sure." I reached into my little handbag and fished it out. She pulled the paper from her plastic holder. Under her name--Holly Russell--she wrote " Legacy" while I peered shamelessly over her shoulder.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Efficient." She grinned at me and folded the card back into its sleeve.

"Why efficient?" I asked. I knew from the interminable orientation that a legacy was someone whose close relative was a member of a certain sorority.

"Spares everyone the trouble of making nice when it's a done deal."

A legacy wasn't supposed to be an automatic in, but that didn't mean it wasn't. "I guess that explains why Zeta Theta Pi asked me back."

"You're a Zeta leg?" She handed me the pen. "Write it down. It'll impress the other houses. Everyone loves the Zetas."

"Really?" I glanced at the double front doors, embla- zoned with . I'd been there yesterday, of course, but those parties had been short and the houses pretty much blurred together. "Why?"

"Because they're cool, why else?"

I tried to picture my mother in a cool sorority and failed utterly. My mother is an accountant. "What about the Sigma Alpha Xis?" I pointed to Holly's name badge. "Did you write that to impress people?"

She sighed. "No. I wrote it so they won't feel they have to bother being nice to me. No SAXi leg goes anywhere but SAXi."

"What are they, like the mafia?"

She barked an Irish setter laugh. "No. Not exactly."

The Zeta doors opened before I could ask her anything else, and we flowed in, carried by the inexorable tide of Sisterhood with a capital S.

F F F

Our merry band left the Zeta house as the sun dropped low in the west.

"Didn't I say?" Holly shortened her strides and we hung at the back of the pack along with Tricia, making our way toward the SAXi house near the center of the block.

"You did." The Zeta Theta Pis exemplified cool: effort- less, amiable, seemingly unconcerned with status or social hierarchy. That unforced confidence reminded me of my friend Lisa. She'd gotten tagged with the nickname D&D Lisa during the role-playing phase of her youth, but by the time she graduated summa cum laude, it had become more of a title. Uniquely beautiful (once she emerged from her Goth cocoon), smart, and sarcastic, she wasn't part of any group at Avalon High, but she had an impressive network of minions and a small fiefdom of friends.

She'd be pissed to think she had anything in common with a sorority. Maybe I just missed her because there was so much on Greek Row worthy of mockery, and I had no one to share it with. I hated that she was so far away, and hated even more that we'd argued before she left.

"I would totally pledge the Zetas if they gave me a bid." Tricia bounced with excitement, which was a brave thing for a girl with her generous bosoms in a strapless dress.

"I thought your heart was set on Delta Delta Gamma."

"Well, all my friends from home, who have already fin- ished Rush at other schools, they went Delta." She laughed, but there was a brittle edge to it. "I'd be the only one from the old squad who didn't, and what fun would that be?"

"A lot more fun than doing something just because your old friends are doing it." I'd gotten a fix on Tricia pretty quickly. Sweet and eager to be liked; girls like the Deltas would smell her insecurity the way sharks smell blood in the water.

Holly spoke from her other side, sounding very reason- able. "You should pledge where you have the most in com- mon with the members here at this school." I found myself liking her, and Tricia's na�ve good nature kind of grew on me, too. If we had met under different circumstances, or if I was who I said I was, I might be thinking of them as new friends, or at least potential ones.

"Maggie?"

I recognized that baritone voice instantly, though I'd last heard it distorted by a transatlantic phone connection.

Darn Gran and her stupid Sight.

Slowly I turned, conscious that Holly and Tricia had stopped, too, and were staring curiously at the tallish young man across the tree-shaded lane.

He wore running clothes, was flushed and sweaty. His brown hair stood up in spikes and his T-shirt clung in dark blotches, which looked nicer than it sounds. Despite the utter lack of traffic, he looked both ways before he crossed the street, which was so very Justin that I felt a painful, twisty flip in the region of my heart.

I waited, feeling strangely tentative considering how much I'd missed him. A zillion questions hopped around in my brain, but something knotted my tongue. Maybe it was the way he smiled and moved as if to embrace me, but then stopped when he saw our audience.

Holly seemed to have some intuition of her own, because she grabbed Tricia's arm, spun her around, and double- timed to catch up with the group. But the moment had passed, and Justin and I shuffled in that awkward way you do when you really want to touch a person but a hug might be too much and a handshake is definitely absurd. A kiss, which was how we had parted, seemed out of the question.

"I haven't heard from you," I blurted out, because a mo- ment like that can always use more awkward.

He looked sheepish, apologetic. "I know. Jet lag, then getting my stuff out of storage, then I had to meet with my adviser about my thesis. The days got away from me."

"Okay." I didn't point out that he'd found time for a run. I didn't point out a lot of things because I didn't want to be snide, and sarcasm is pretty much all I have when I feel this out of my depth.

His gaze took in my uncharacteristic dress, then nar- rowed on my name tag. "Are you going through Rush?"

I smoothed the folds of my skirt. The evening air was cooling quickly as the sun disappeared. "I'm undercover." He had a crooked smile that always hit me in the gut. It turned his clean-cut, Boy Scout face into something subver- sively rakish. "Can I buy you a cup of coffee and hear about it?"

"I'd like that." I said it in shamelessly eager haste. "But I have to finish this first. Why don't we meet at F and J? About nine o'clock?"

He nodded, decisive. "Froth and Java, nine o'clock."

"Maggie!" Jenna called back from the group, sounding impatient and a little annoyed.

"I've got to run." I edged up the hill, reluctant to leave and break the tentative reconnection.

"See you then." He smiled and gave me a little wave.

"Yeah. See you." I lifted my fingers, too, and watched him return to his workout already in progress, wishing my psychic mojo extended to reading minds.

F F F

The Sigma Alpha Xi house was in the colonial revival style, popular when the university and its nearby neighbor- hoods were built in the late nineteenth, early-twentieth cen- tury. The lawn sloped down from the house and the rushee herd ranged there when Jenna and I arrived; the Rho Gamma climbed the steps to the columned portico, where she rapped on the door. Holly and Tricia waited for me at the back of the group, near the sidewalk. Night had fallen in earnest, but didn't hide their avidly curious faces.

"Who was that?" Holly asked.

"A friend." At her disbelieving look, I sighed and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. "It's complicated."

She made an "I'm waiting" gesture. Tricia helpfully added, "I want to know, too. He's adorable."

Holly turned to her, her brows climbing. "Adorable does not begin to describe a guy with thighs like that." Then, swiveling her attention back to me: "So what gives?"

I looked toward the house, hoping for a reprieve. No dice. "We went out in the spring, a couple of times." An oversimplification, but--taking all the world-saving and monster-hunting out of it--true enough. "Then he went to Ireland for a three-month internship."

"So what's so complicated?" Holly asked. "He's back and obviously happy to see you--" Tricia snickered and Holly smacked her arm. "Not like that, pervert."

I shrugged, looked away, needlessly smoothed my hair again. "We e-mailed over the summer. Great, chatty letters about nothing and everything."

"That's so sweet." Tricia grinned. "Kind of like You've Got Mail."

"Yeah. Only in reverse, because his letters started get- ting shorter, less personal, slower." I lifted my hands help- lessly. "It sounds lame, I guess. Hard to explain."

They nodded, synchronized head bobs of sympathy. Holly summed it up nicely. "So now you have no idea where you stand."

"He probably got really busy with his internship." Tricia, clearly the eternal optimist. "You'll see."

"Maybe." I studied the toes of my shoes, flecked with grass and bits of pine needle. There was no point in pre- tending that my heart wasn't hanging in the balance; at least after meeting up tonight, I would--

Then the door to the sorority house opened, spilling light into the dusky shadows and bringing me back to the task at hand. F F F

The Sigma Alpha Xi chapter room was nothing short of elegant. Hardwood floors shone beneath an oriental rug, and dark blue and deep red echoed through the d�cor. No one thing screamed money; it was the way everything fit to- gether. If the Zetas had been intrinsically cool, then the Sig- mas were fundamentally classy.

I had the dance down by now. The doors open and we rushees enter like cattle into a chute. One of the sorority members steps forward in a well-orchestrated move, takes a girl by the elbow, and leads her to a designated area of the room. It took me a few rounds to catch on to the architecture of the "random" party groupings and the carefully choreo- graphed mingling.